Harts Theatre Company in partnership with Lyric Hammersmith presents the Young Harts Writing Festival 7 - 8 april 2017

Young Harts Writing Festival is an inter-borough new writing festival, which merges the gap between emerging young artists and professional artists. Through an online competition, five plays written by emerging young writers are chosen. They receive a free writing master class, and another month to complete their plays. Each young writer will be partnered with a professional writer as a mentor.

After a gruelling decision process we have chosen our 5 emerging winning writers: Abraham Adeyemi, James Mcdermott, Katrina Smith-Jackson, Simon James and Urielle Klien-Mekongo who will compete against 5 professional writers: Charlotte Josephine, Eve Leigh, Gbolahan Obisesan, Martin Murphy, Sabrina Mafouz, for the title of audience favourite.

WINNERS

Christian Graham is a writer of Jamaican/Guyanese heritage and tends to be interested in scripts that have an element of the abstract to them because he believes there is a lot that slightly ethereal stories can show us about truth. And writing is surely the search for how to portray that, whatever your definition of that is. At the moment he's completing the final year of an MA in Dramatic Writing at Central Saint Martin and he is a current member of the 2016-2017 Orange Tree Writers’ Collective. He started out writing short scripts for Emporium players, a theatre company run out of a coffee shop on Brick Lane.

Abraham Adeyemi is a Creative Writing graduate from Birkbeck University. Since graduating, he have continued to pursue my writing ambitions. He has had a feature film optioned, participated in a writing team at Channel 4 to develop a TV drama, had a play long-listed for the Papatango New Writing Prize and a separate play long-listed for The Old Vic 12. He also started his own company: Creative Blue Balls which hones and nurtures the talent of writers whilst providing them a platform to flourish in theatre and film.

Simon James graduated from Lancaster University in 2015 with a first class degree in English and Creative Writing. Whilst there he self-published a book of short stories which sold over 500 copies in local bookshops and on Amazon. He is currently self- employed in Manchester, working in TV production, journalism and PR.

Urielle Klein-Mekongo is currently studying BA Acting and Contemporary Theatre at East 15 Drama School. Urielle is an actress, writer, singer songwriter and designer.

James McDermott has taken part in young writers’ development programs with HighTide, Menagerie and is currently participating on Soho Theatre’s Writers Lab. He's had short plays staged at Southwark Playhouse, The Old Red Lion Theatre and Latitude. His first full length play ‘Rubber Ring’ was longlisted for The Verity Bargate Award 2015.

our first special commendation writer

Freya Hannan-Mills is a 13 year old home educated student. She is passionate about acting and writing, and has had a short story published in an anthology by Daunt Books. This is her first time writing a short play.

HARTS Theatre Company

H-Arts is a company founded by Ann Akin, a professional actress, writer and drama facilitator.

Our focus is using performing arts to work with young people with the aim to provide them with a voice to help create social change.

Our workshops are aimed at developing performance skills and encouraging self expression through creative activities. Classes will help to develop confidence, physical awareness and communication in an educational and fun environment.